BOY GEORGE, British singer (Culture Club) was born on this date; Born George Dowd, an English singer-songwriter and club DJ, he grew up in a large, working-class Irish family. Boy George was part of the English New Romantic movement which emerged in the early 1980s. Boy George helped give this androgyny an international stage with the success of Culture Club during the 1980s. Musically speaking, he is often classified as blue-eyed soul, having been heavily influenced by rhythm and blues and reggae. His later solo work touches on glam influences, particularly David Bowie and Iggy Pop.

When George was with Culture Club, much was made of his androgynous appearance, and there was speculation about his sexuality. When asked the question in interviews, George gave various answers. At times he suggested he was bisexual. He gave a famous, often quoted response to an interviewer that “I prefer a nice cup of tea to sex”.

In Take It Like A Man, George told his side of his relationship with Culture Club drummer Jon Moss (also Kirk Brandon). He said many of the songs he wrote for Culture Club were directed at Moss.

In 2005, Century published Straight, his second autobiographical book, this time written with author Paul Gorman. It was in The Sunday Times best-seller list for six weeks. This latter autobiography starts off where the former had stopped, though the two works are different in style, due to their different co-authors, and all of the chapters have a title in the 2005 book, while the 1995 autobiography only featured numbered sections.

In October 2016, Boy George performed David Bowie’s “Starman” – nine months after his death from liver cancer – along with the National Health Service choir, as part of Channel 4’s Stand Up to Cancer UK programme. In 2017, Boy George participated in the last season of The New Celebrity Apprentice on NBC, in which he supported the charity Safe Kids Worldwide and came in second place. Also in 2017 he collaborated on Pitbull’s album Climate Change.

In August 2017, Boy George signed a recording deal with BMG, reuniting him with his songwriting catalogue, as BMG had acquired the Virgin Records songwriters in 2012.

In March 2020, through his YouTube channel, George respectively released (as videos) two new solo songs entitled “Clouds” and “Isolation” taken from his forthcoming album Geminis Don’t Read The Manual which was due to be released later in the year, but was postponed. In April 2020 on his own record label BGP (Boy George Presents) he released the Isolation Limited Edition 2-track CD Single (Catalogue No: BGP015) including the title track and a new “Spatial Awareness Meets The Boy Uptown Dub” mix of the track “Clouds“.